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IMPOSSIBLE is not a word I’m willing to accept anymore. I’ve kicked it out of my vocabulary. I’ve learned there is no power above or beside me, behind or below me, that is more powerful than the love inside me. This is not a time for fear in my life. This is a time for faith, and determination. Faith in a voice that I once hushed up due to shame, and determination to tell my story, so people will stop dying by suicide, and their families will stop weeping brokenhearted beside their graves. I found my voice again. Now the world needs you to find yours, too.

I may not know you personally-but I know without meeting you that you have the soul of a champion. And because you’re a champion, if I could sit with you and look into your eyes, I’d offer this advice: Hold onto the dreams you hide in your heart. There is one thing that has always been true, and holds the world together-your dreams are the hope for a better future for us all. If you give up on those dreams, you’ve given up on all the rest of us, and the world desperately needs you not to do that.

Don’t lose your vision yet, because there is a place inside yourself where nothing is impossible (Deepak Choprah). Because you are part flesh, and part spirit, the spirit part of you came into this life with a box full of dreams for the flesh part of you to unlock. No matter how young or how old you are, you carry around this box. And one glorious day you might get sick of carrying it around, and just decide you’re going to open it. In order to open it, you’ll have to be willing do a few things that most people aren’t willing to do. I didn’t say couldn’t do-I said not WILLING to do. Here’s 5 things that will unlock your box:

1. You’re going to have to let go of your agenda. Your agenda is what you made up along the way because you didn’t know what else to do with your life. Up to this point you’ve done everything you knew to do to make the most of your life. But if there’s something in you telling you that you could be much more, then you haven’t opened the box wide enough. Often it’s our own contrived agendas that get in the way of who we were meant to be. Stop trying so hard to play a role, and just be YOU. I know that sounds strange. But when I stopped trying so hard to be a counselor and just started being Nina, my life unlocked.

2. You’re going to have to keep it real. Probably the #1 impediment to growth is the facade we were taught to wear. The masks are going to have to come off. You’re going to have to get real with yourself first, and honestly will flow from there.

3. You’re going to have to cultivate openness. Are you willing to learn from an idiot, or to look like one? Author Danielle LaPort says in her blog article, On Idiots and Cultivating Openness: “The truth is everywhere. Sometimes hiding in plain sight, or beneath presumptions and labels – whether you agree or not.”

4. You’re going to have to be outgoing. This may rankle my introverted friends out there. But before you change the channel, you might be surprised to find that I consider myself an introvert. I enjoy spending time alone more than I do spending time with company. And my battery recharges when I’m alone vs. getting charged by being around others. Those are classic symptoms of an introvert (writers are very often introverts who would rather let the pen speak for them). There are ways of being outgoing that don’t include being the “party girl.” Think of the word for a minute: out-going. In other words, you have to be willing to put yourself out there by making your voice heard and expressing yourself.

5. You’re going to have to believe in yourself. For most of us, this is where the rubber meets the road and the tires fall off our car. When you’ve had a string of losses it’s real difficult to keep telling yourself (and other people) that you’re making a comeback. But I’d like to share with you a secret I found that’s a game-changer: everybody likes rooting for an underdog. Other people relate to failure, because they’ve experienced a whole heap of it themselves. So when you’re willing to get real about your failures (rule #2), you’ll find people opening up about theirs. It’s not what the media tells us to do-that’s why this sounds counter-intuitive. But I’ve found in real life, people relate more to your failures than to your triumphs. You don’t have to be perfect to believe in yourself. Just believe in your potential. Because I do (believe in you). Others will too, as soon as you realize that your past doesn’t have to determine your present. Release your grip on failure. Learn from it, but don’t get mired in it. You’re more than a set of outdated circumstances.